Looking for the best Preamp with a phono circuit built in

I’ve gone back to SE RCA’ed designs, but my heart lingers for that balanced purest design.

Single-ended circuits tend to feature the 2nd harmonic as their primary distortion component.

Balanced circuits, because they cancel even-ordered harmonics, tend to feature the 3rd harmonic as their primary distortion component.

The ear treats the 2nd and 3rd about the same- they add to 'lushness".

But circuits that have the 3rd as their main distortion component overall tend to have considerably less distortion- and this continues into the higher ordered harmonics. They don't just have less of the even orders, they have less of the odd orders too. That 3rd harmonic is at a level that is often 1/10th of the level of 2nd you see in single-ended circuits.


So **generally** speaking, balanced circuits tend to be overall lower distortion and because the ear treats all forms of distortion as some sort of tonality (often favoring that tonality over actual frequency response) balanced circuits tend to sound more neutral- more transparent and more musical overall.

 That phono section is still great sounding as was the CD input.  

IME the phono section should sound better...

Maybe, but some AI preamps have three knobs. One is labeled as volume and the other two are labeled as left and right. How does that work?

Pretty well.

That's how our preamps are set up. The individual Gain Trim controls are used to set balance and overall gain. The Master control then makes adjusting the volume very easy.

@mdrummer01

Do you need balanced or single-ended? All phono cartridges are balanced sources for what its worth.